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Tag Archives: Saudi Arabia

There are times when I despair at the attitude of muslims to non muslims and the culture of western countries. They will be the first to demand that WE respect THEIR culture but seem at times incapable of reciprocating. At the start of the recent Australia v Saudi Arabia football match in Australia the Saudi players ignored the minutes silence at the start of the match, held to pay respect to the London killings and in particular the fact that two of those who lost their lives were Australian nationals

Saudi Arabian football bosses have since issued an “unreserved” apology after their players failed to properly observe a minute’s silence in honour of London terror attack victims at the World Cup qualifier against the Socceroos in Adelaide.

The article below is from the BBC web site and illustrates the problems that women face in islamic society. It is easy to see why the events in Cologne happened if this is the attitude towards a practicing female muslim. The sad thing is that the attacks on her come from both men AND women.

Nawal al-Hawsawi is outspoken, black, a qualified pilot and married to a white man – everything her critics say a Saudi woman shouldn’t be. But despite receiving waves of abuse on social media, she refuses to bow to convention and hits back at her detractors “with love”.

Al-Hawsawi has become something of a star on social media. She has amassed almost 50,000 followers on Twitter, where she posts about the importance of racial diversity and marriage equality. But not everyone reading her feed is a fan.

Two Saudi women who were detained for defying the kingdom’s ban on female drivers have been freed after more than 70 days in custody, reports say. Loujain al-Hathloul, 25, was arrested while campaigning for the ban to be eased. Her friend Maysa al-Amoudi, 33, was detained when she went to help her.

Concerns for the women were heightened after reports that their case was being transferred to a terrorism court.

Saudi Arabia is the world’s only country to forbid women from driving. While it is not technically illegal for women to drive, only men are awarded driving licences – and women who drive in public risk being fined and arrested by the police.

Saudi women have launched a series of campaigns – including on social media – to demand an easing of the restrictions. Under Saudi rules, women must be consigned to the passenger seat

Whilst I am no particular fan of the Obamas I do take my hat off to Michelle for having the temerity to challenge the misogyny and severe restrictions placed on women in Saudi Arabia by appearing in public with her hair uncovered

She highlighted the restrictions placed on women in Saudi Arabia as she paid her respects to the late King Abdullah without wearing a headscarf. Her divisive decision not to cover her hair as she met King Salman bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud drew both criticism and praise across social media.

The move also illustrated the severe restraints placed on women living in the ultra-conservative Kingdom, who must cover their hair and wear loose black robes in public at all times. Most Saudi women wear full face veils known as niqabs.

In addition to this, women are banned from driving, must be accompanied by a male chaperone when they leave the house…

Religion – or more accurately differences in religious beliefs – has been said to be the cause of more deaths in our history on this planet than any other. And you don’t have to look much further than the schism between different kinds of muslims and the horrendous outcomes of that disagreement to wonder if that is true.

Since the Trojan Horse scandal in the midlands Ofsted inspectors seem to be taking the threat of extremist influences more seriously. At present the British Education Secretary has threatened to shut six independent muslim schools which, following snap inspections, have been found inadequate amid concerns about child welfare. (Of these schools four of them were previously rated as good or outstanding but three of the six schools were inspected by a muslim inspector begging the question of impartiality surely?).

At one school the designated child protection officer didn’t know he had the job. At another pupils told inspectors that a woman’s roles was to stay at home and cook and clean. At another girls had to wait for lessons to start until the teachers and the boys returned from the mosque.

The head of Ofsted, Sir Michael Wilshaw, said he was extremely concerned “about the large number of failings in each of the six independent schools inspected“. These include inadequate health and safety arrangements including locked fire exits and easy access by unauthorised members of the public (three of the schools were situated inside mosques). In all six policies relating to health, safety and welfare were missing or out of date. In four of the six schools statutory background checks had not been completed on the teaching staff.

They also had narrow curriculums focussing on developing Islamic knowledge at the expense of core subjects.

Nicky Morgan, the Education Secretary said “while there is no evidence of a coordinated plot it is clear these schools are failing children and it is unacceptable. All schools must prepare children for life in modern Britain”

She has said that unless the schools produce an Action Plan within weeks she reserves the right to close them down.

Janice Turner, writing in the Times, described a conversation with a girl who had attended a private Islamic Boarding school – Jania Al-Hudaa in Nottingham.Pupils there were forbidden to swim, make art, read a newspaper, play a musical instrument, speak to the opposite sex, own a camera or read Harry Potter. Biology textbooks were censored.

Pupils din’t know the difference between sharia and British law. The majority of time on the curriculum is spent on “Islamic sciences“. Now over a thousand years ago Islamic scholars were developing ideas in maths, astronomy, physics and medicine based on what we would now recognise as a scientific approach but nowadays it’s a study of how the world is to be interpreted through the Qoran.

Furthermore these schools are funded by Saudi Arabian clerics who are devoted to spreading the extreme arab-speaking Wahabi version of Islam. (SeeUn- islamic things muslims do). Remember the free school in Derby that was closed down after pupils were segregated and all female staff (including non-muslims – were forced to wear the hijab?

But it’s not just muslim-run schools. Sir John Cass Foundation and Red Coat school, a Church of England secondary school which was previously rated as outstanding, has been failed by inspectors.

It failed to vet visiting speakers and didn’t teach children about the risks of extremism despite more than 90% of its pupils being muslim. Although it had achieved excellent results it was placed in special measures because the behaviour and safety of students.

Some students had set up Facebook and Youtube accounts account linked to jihadi extremism and boys and girls were segregated in the school. How can the head, Haydn Evans, who got a CBE this year plus an honorary degree from the University of London only this week, have thought this was OK?

And today the Sunday Times reported on Hasidic, Orthodox Jewish, schools where students were students’s welfare was neglected and in one school students were slapped as punishment because teachers thought it “resulted in full submission”. The curriculum of these schools seems to consist of teaching religious instruction in Yiddish or Hebrew.

Two schools in Stamford Hill, London, have been threatened with closure and one in Salford has been downgraded from good to inadequate. Another London school has been downgraded from outstanding to good. Last year it received a warning after blacking out questions on evolution in GCSE science examinations.

Apparently theDfE has had concerns about some of these school for 5 years! It said “Some orthodox Jewish schools often do not devote priority and time to secular education”. According to a mother of a pulp at one of the schools only 1 hour a day was spent on non-religious education.

The government’s guidelines on spiritual, moral, social and cultural development for independent schools came into force on 29 September andthe Tower Hamlet’s schools were inspected under the guidelines in October. Several are criticised as failing under the guidelines, such as not dealing with allegedly extremist leaflets in mosques associated with some of the schools.

The growth of faith schools started when Tony Blair was Prime Minister (perhaps explained by his secret desire to become a catholic) and now a third of all state schools are religious. But David Cameron is also an apologist for them saying “faith-based schools help to build ethos and community”.

And recently the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welsby, dismissed criticism of faith schools saying none had been caught up in the Trojan Horse scandal. He said “We are the solution not the problem”. Well that was two weeks ago and it shows how short-sighted the establishment can be to let these things fester in plain view because of concerns about being seen to be multi-cultural.

We should be more like France (I never thought those words would pass my lips) be proud of our British values and insist on a wholly secular education system.

In Saudi Arabia until this year women weren’t allowed to work unless in upper class occupations such as doctors or in government.

After several years of protests by women about men serving them in lingerie shops King Abdullah finally announced 6 months ago that men would be banned from working in lingerie shops and also eventually in cosmetics shops.

This social revolution will apparently create 40,000 jobs for women in over 7,000 shops (apparently more lingerie is sold in Saudi Arabia than in France). The men who worked in lingerie shops previously were mainly from Pakistan.

The Grand Mufti isn’t happy saying that it is against God’s law permitting women to work and that it is a crime and prohibited by Islamic sharia.

The Ministry of Labour first floated the idea 3 years ago but the clerics issued a fatwa banning women from working. In return women called for boycotts on lingerie shops employing men.

This time, following the royal decree, the Ministry of Labour will be posting guards in the shopping malls to prevent the women workers being harassed.

At the same time many of you will have seen the horrific pictures of an female Egyptian protestor being dragged along the road as military police brutally kicked and beat her and stamped on her half naked body.

The almost surreal thing about the picture was the fact underneath her robes the unknown protestor was wearing a bright blue bra. That has now become a symbol of protest for Egyptian women and others farther afield.

Saudi Arabian counter-espionage agents recently “arrested” a vulture they believed to be a Mossad spy.

They had spotted it circling around in the sky in a suspicious manner (that’s what they do looking for dead flesh) and when they actuall caught it they found it had a GPS tracking devices attached to it. However after news stories about “Zionist plots” a Saudi Prince announced that once the device had been checked the bird would be freed.

These devices are put there by scientists at Tel Aviv University to track their movements. So you could, kind of, see why they might look suspicious. But come on, everyone knows that they should be looking out for pigeons!

Updated 18 February 2011: Seems that almost all Asian vultures have been wiped out because of a (now banned) drug used by farmers and vets to keep livestock healthy. This has meant an increase in disease, rats and wild dogs which are more of a threat to humans than the vultures.

So they have set up vulture restaurants in India, Pakistan, Nepal and South Africa. These are fly-in sites (no advance booking required and plenty of landing space near fresh water) where vultures can eat uncontaminated carcasses – bought from local villagers and drug-tested – nest, and breed. Read more here